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recently a lady (let’s say her name is mary) vocalized to me how she was hurt by another lady (let’s say her name is lilly), because lilly had been so demeaning and condescending in a recent dialogue. mary seemed to be very hurt and truly had taken this encounter to heart. mary proceeded to depict the reasons as to “why” lilly was this way and acted this way. thereby attaching a judgment as to “why” she did what she did. mary seemed to have fallen prey to someone elses “stuff.”

i proceeded to encourage mary to talk to lilly and resolve this conflict. of course, mary felt like there was no use in resolving this, because she had already decided that this person was a jerk. mary decided that being hurt and attaching such powerful significance to lilly’s actions was better for her emotionally and spiritually.

i find it fascinating how each of us find ourselves in this silly scenario. we attach dynamic significance to peoples judgments, insults and negative body language. in other words, “my world becomes rocked when you don’t treat me the way i should be treated.”

in essence, when we become offended, we are the one’s who attach significance to what is being said, whether through body language or verbal communication. the moment someones actions put us into “defensive” mode, we should ask ourselves this quesiton, “are their actions my stuff or their stuff?” i can NEVER make you responsible for my reactions or even actions. likewise, i can never allow you to drag me into your stuff. i must never allow you to make me responsible for your choices (being mad, glad, sad, joyful etc…).

think of the example of a abuser saying, “look what you made me do!” an abuser isn’t MADE to do anything, he/she has the choice to do so.

therefore, WE are the empowerers when it comes to someone causing offense to us. are we going to make everything “about us” when a offense arises or are we going to resolve that we are responsible for “how” we react to other people’s stuff (body language, verbal communication, etc…).

remember that jesus said, “offenses WILL come.” so, we can see that none of us are exempt from offenses entering our hemisphere. Notice that offenses will come, BUT we have the choice whether or not we will receive them and allow them to wreck our world.

i love this saying, “i am not who you think i am; i am not who i think i am; i am who i think you think i am.” in gist, many allow their lives to be dictated emotionally by others judgments. you are responsible for your stuff, not someone elses!

Throughout the months of August and September The Orchard has been preparing for a new series, The Apprentice, which begins at The Orchard this weekend, Sunday, Sept. 26th! The staff team as well as a wide range of volunteers have put their heads together in an attempt to kick off this series with a BOOM!

More than 60 volunteers from The Orchard have made it possible for us to invite 4,000 families to The Apprentice series. Last week over 20 volunteers stuffed bags that would be distributed to 4,000 homes – each bag included an invite to The Apprentice and a coupon for a free drink from Common Grounds cappuccino bar. This past weekend volunteers gave up their Saturday to invite their community to this exciting series. Thank you on behalf of The Orchard to all those who contributed to the canvassing project last weekend – what a tremendous difference this group made!

So many people will never attend a church service because no one took the time to invite them. Many people who received an invite last weekend explained that they’ve been “looking for a church”, “thinking about visiting The Orchard”, or were just thankful to get the invite. People seemed excited about this series and to learn more about what’s happening at The Orchard.

Who have you invited to The Orchard for this exciting new series?

Don’t miss out on the chance to invite your friends and family to join us on a journey to discover what God had to say about being the ultimate apprentice.

If you were @ The Orchard on Sunday, you will remember that Jim Larson (passionate missionary to Thailand) shared about his family’s work in Thailand. Today, we received an email from Jim inviting us to a gallery displaying moving images from the city of Bangkok. Here’s the info if you are interested in going:

Hi again.

When I am in a church with really good worship, for some reason I almost always tear up thinking of my friends in Thailand working at their go-go bars. The better the worship, the more my sadness.

I felt it yesterday at Orchard Valley Community Church. I suddenly find myself back in the Chicago area for 11 days. I’m here to take care of some business, but naturally would like to take advantage of the time to share in person about what God is doing, and what we need to do in response.

This Friday night, September 24, Jimi Allen and Katharine Wagner will host a gathering at the new Jimi Allen Photography studio at 76 South LaSalle in Aurora from 6 to 10 pm.

Jimi and Katharine will set up a portion of the awesome gallery show, ’girl.’ I will make a group presentation on the ministry in Thailand at 7:30, focusing on the need to begin to sponsor girls/women for 6-month to 1-year terms for discipleship and job training.

I know this is very short notice, as this whole trip was for me, but if you happen to have a free evening, I’d really love to see you.

I wanted to add one more thing about this weekend. We are going to be having a special guest visiting us from Thailand in both weekend services. So not only will you not want to miss Ted’s message, you’ll also not want to miss hearing from our special guest.

As most of you are aware, we are starting a new series beginning in a couple of weeks (Sunday, September 26th) entitled “The Apprentice: Preparing for the Ultimate Boardroom”. This is going to be an exciting 9 week series that we believe will help prepare us all to become the ultimate apprentices!

We also believe this is a great series for the unchurched of our community. As always, we are going to work really hard to create the best possible environment for you to invite your unchurched friends and family members. We also have a great plan to spread the word to our local community. BUT – we need your help!

We want to spread the word of this series to as many people as possible and to help do that, we are going to be distributing 4,000 full color post cards to our surrounding neighborhoods this coming Saturday, September 18th at 10:00AM.

We’ve had a great response so far, but in order to hit all of the homes, we need your help!

If you can carve out 2 or 3 hours on this coming Saturday and help us out, please respond to this email by clicking here.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Amber by clicking here or calling 630-897-8888.

By the way, we are NOT going to be knocking on doors or approaching people one on one. We will simply be walking up to people’s doors and placing a clear plastic bag on their door knob.

(To get a sneak peak of the flyer, click here! (.pdf file) It turned out AWESOME!)

Again, take a moment and reply by clicking here if you can plan on making it Saturday and haven’t yet signed up.